New tv based website – designer / developer required by prizes

I would like any web designers or developers out there to get in touch with me regarding a new website I am looking to create. The theme itself is to be based around a ‘tv’ type concept (i.e. inspired by blinkbox.com and seesaw.com)… (Budget: $250-750, Jobs: Graphic Design, HTML, PHP, Website Design)


Small Lazarus App with little bugs to fix by Lionel59

Hi, I have a small windows&mac application developped with Lazarus. One little window, a drag and drop feature to select zip files and a button. The function of this app is to find a specific folder on the hard disk (thanks to the registry) and to unzipp files in that specific folder… (Budget: $30-250, Jobs: Delphi)


Pigeon wings broadband speed test

Pigeon at a Greek train stationIn urban areas, broadband cleanly wins, but rural areas are a different story

Broadband is the most modern of communication means, while carrier pigeons date back to Roman times.

But on 16 September the two will be pitted against each other – and the pigeon is expected to win.

Ten pigeons will be released from a Yorkshire farm at the same time a five-minute video upload is begun.

Campaigners say the stunt is being carried out to illustrate that broadband in some parts of the UK is still “not fit for purpose”.

It is not the first time that such a race has taken place. Last year a similar experiment in Durban, South Africa saw Winston the pigeon take two hours to finish a 96km journey. In the same time just 4% of a 4GB file had downloaded.

The pigeons are expected to complete a 120km journey to Skegness in around two hours, but Tref Davies, who is organising the stunt to give publicity to the campaign for better rural broadband, said the broadband connection will take significantly longer to tranfer the 300MB file.

“The farm we are using has a connection of around 100 to 200 Kbps (kilobits per second),” said Mr Davies.

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“The kids need to do school work and the farmer has to submit online forms but the connection is not fit for purpose.”

Mr Davies who is co-founder of business ISP Timico and serves on the board of ISPA (Internet Service Providers’ Association) believes the issue is one that industry and government needs to address.

“This is the UK. It should be well-connected but around a third of homes still can’t get broadband,” he said.

Speed test

Even among those who can get broadband, rural areas are fighting to get reasonable speeds.

Research commissioned by the BBC last year found that around three million homes in the UK had internet connections of below 2Mbps (megabits per second).

The government has committed to delivering a minimum of 2Mbps to every home by 2015.

However, a recent report by communications watchdog Ofcom found that while these “headline speeds” were on the rise, they are not the relevant measure for broadband customers.

According to the report, “although headline speeds increased by nearly 50% between April 2009 and May 2010, actual speeds delivered increased by just 27%, and averaged just 46% of headline speeds”.

Lloyd Felton, founder of the Rural Broadband Partnership, said the effort to draw attention to rural broadband deprivation and low speeds was laudable.

“It’s true that there are particular areas of the coutnry that suffer much more than others,” Mr Felton told BBC News.

“You’ve got massive deprivation – this long-quoted ‘digital divide’. As we all get more dependent on the internet, that divide gets wider.

“In the end it’s who takes ownership and responsibility for coordinating how a parish is going to handle it – what we say is that ‘comunities need to help themselves to broadband’.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.